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The Newsletter | Edition 026
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In our Off-White Papers, we provide practical guidance on how to respond to our rapidly-changing world. This weekly newsletter explores those topics in real-time, with information and action steps on how to make progress now.
IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...BLIND SPOTS.
We all have them, and their very nature is to not be easily seen... by you. In a new way of working, in a new world in flux, there is potential for blind spots to compound. What are people doing today to contend with their blind spots?
- The upside of knowing less from Sherzad Rahmatian
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Realistic futurism over optimism from Alex Anderson
- Peer-based truth bombs from Ilana Bondell
And this time, our illustrations from Nora Mestrich. |
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THE WISDOM IN NAÏVETÉ
From Sherzad Rahmatian |
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TL;DR
In the business world, we tend to reward experts—be they leaders, the most tenured or technical people, or the people closest to a problem. But favoring the ideas of those who are closest to a problem is a blindspot that can bias us against the simpler, better ideas right in front of us.
WHY IT MATTERS
When advertisers were introducing Taylors coffee bags to the world, they started by looking closely at the product—a breakthrough new coffee bag which required years of development to bring to market. Being this close to the product and its technical superiority led the team down a path of overly complex advertising ideas, missing the “disarmingly frank” ad concept that eventually won and drove a successful launch for the brand. This idea came not from those most knowledgeable on the topic of coffee or the product—it came from those who knew the least. In the art world, naive art, once considered amateurish in its simplicity, was later legitimized "when a handful of artists openly acknowledged naive art as an inspiration.” To overcome this blind spot, we need to make room for the ideas that can come from less experienced people and places.
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Incorporate a healthy dose of naiveté when developing solutions for complex problems.
TIPS
- Try to put yourself (and your team) in the shoes of someone new to the issues.
- Inviting someone with more distance from the problem to weigh in, for example: mix up working teams to incorporate ‘amateurs’ who are new to a problem.
- Prioritize starting with the simplest solutions, then building complexity from there.
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FOOLISH (WHITE) OPTIMISM
From Alex Anderson |
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TL;DR
An overwhelmingly white industry of futurists have pushed away some of the perceived “softer” elements of foresight (social change, family structures, or cultural movements) in favor of mathematical modeling and technology. That’s a problem—when only one type of person is engaged in asking key questions that envision the future, they miss entire frameworks for identifying and solving problems.
WHY IT MATTERS
In the 1980s, key members of the futurist community (all men) were invited to write essays on what they saw coming. Many were close to predicting the future when it came to the cell phone or evolution of the personal computer. But they never considered the social side of progress: flattened organizations, polarization, social media, the uprisings in the Middle East or ISIS using Twitter.
White men (like me!) have the naive ability to offer the most optimistic vision. They can get up on stage and tell us that the world will be okay, that technology will fix all our problems, that we’ll live forever. But for a long time the future has belonged to people who have not had to struggle. The issues and problems that many people face everyday—harassment, child care, work-life balance, water rights, immigration, police brutality—are not going away. And as more and more systems collapse, currency, energy, the ability to get water, the ability to work, the future will increasingly belong to those who know how to hustle. Those are not the people who are producing those purely optimistic futures.
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Embrace a pursuit of futurism that all can believe in.
THOUGHTS
Leaders must learn to think like futurists if they want to keep up with the rapidly changing pace of innovation, technology, economics, work-life, and culture at large. The crux of the "future" is that it's uncertain, and endeavoring to forecast it requires generating a wide range of possibilities to become more adaptable and better prepared. But it's equally important to consider how the work we put in right now will determine whether those possibilities have the fighting chance to be truly equitable in the future. |
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OUR COLLEAGUES, OUR MIRRORS
From Ilana Bondell |
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TL;DR
Many companies today still rely on top-down ‘performance reviews,’ overlooking the opportunity for rich employee growth—and insightful (benign) truth bombs—that can only come from a social, peer review system.
WHY IT MATTERS
Reviews are a unique opportunity to bust through blind-spots and reckon with meaningful change or growth goals we want or need to hit. But in a distributed, COVID-era workplace, relationship-building with managers is typically less frequent and certainly less happenstance. By soliciting candid (i.e. anonymized) pooled reviews for an employee from a mix of peers, direct reports, and managers, companies can offer employees an invaluable mirror on their workplace strengths and opportunities, from those who truly know them best (because, yes, endless Zoom meetings count as face-time).
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Consider a social feedback system for employees that allows performance reviews to be truly illuminating, rather than a top-down conversation defined by a narrow focus on compensation or titles.
TIPS
Check out the HBR piece for a systematic overview of key considerations when implementing a social review system, but here are a few quick learnings from our experiences at SYLVAIN:
- Reviews don’t have to be annual! Whenever possible, encourage a culture of growth-oriented check-ins and post-mortems, allowing employees to honestly reflect more in real time.
- Encourage submissions, whenever possible, from colleagues across the “hierarchy” that interface with the employee.
- Seek opportunities to streamline wherever possible. The more simple the ask (e.g. numerical scales, easy-to-answer questions), the more engaged the feedback team will be.
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